Posted by The less said about Sydney FC’s 2024–25 the better? Going into the season, the attacking lineup provided reasons for excitement but there were obvious holes elsewhere, and it didn’t take long for that to manifest on the field.
The Cup campaign ended in early disappointment, and while the league effort was floundering, some decent continental performances (and some luck) saw a surprise avenue open up for potential silverware. It eventually ended in late disappointment.
Throughout it all, the SFCU members voted for their Player of the Season. And the time has finally come to announce those results!
Voters
First of all, I have to give a huge thanks to the 80 people who submitted at least one vote this season. Incredibly, ten of those voters voted in every single one of Sydney FC’s 39 competitive matches this season.
Overall we had a total of 1375 votes, an average of 35.3 per match. As you can see below, this reversed a recent downward trend and is the 7th highest average across the 14 seasons of the award.
Probably unsurprisingly, the voting numbers declined slowly over the course of the season. But of all the seasons that included over 30 matches, 2024–25 was towards the top of the pile for votes in the final games.
Results
Douglas Costa is your 2024–25 SFCU Player of the Season!
It was an incredibly close race for Player of the Season, but 5 MOTMs, 5 second places and 5 thirds1 were enough for Douglas Costa to finish 0.67 points ahead of Anthony Cáceres (4 MOTMs, 6 seconds, 6 thirds), who was just 0.33 ahead of Adrian Segecic (8 MOTMs, 5 thirds). The single point separating first from third makes this the closest season ever in that regard, beating out 2021–22.2
The full results for every match, and the final standings can be found here; and the graph below shows how the Player of the Season race unfolded.
Behind the top three was Anas Ouahim (6 MOTMs, 2 seconds, 3 thirds), who only picked up 3.33 points in the last 24 matches to lose the 9.5-point gap he opened up at the top early on. Trailing him at that point was Léo Sena, who himself ended up in 8th, having also had a very quiet end to the season (0.83 points in the last 31 matches).
Between them finished Patryk Klimala (2 MOTMs, 7 seconds, 2 thirds), back-to-back defending champion Joe Lolley (3 MOTMs, 4 seconds, 2 thirds) and Rhyan Grant (3 MOTMs, 1 second, 2 thirds). Seventh place for Rhyno is his best finish since 2019–20, when he finished fifth.
Rounding out the top 10 were Wataru Kamijo (1 MOTM, 2 seconds, 2 thirds) and Harrison Devenish-Meares (2 seconds, 3 thirds). Others to win MOTMs were Tiago Quintal (2 MOTMs) in 12th, Hayden Matthews (1 MOTM) in 13th, Corey Hollman (1 MOTM) in 15th and Andrew Redmayne in 16th, the veteran keeper having won it in his last appearance for the club.
Other stats and final words
Dougie’s narrow win carried on a strong streak for Sydney FC’s foreign brigade. He is the 10th visa player to win it in the 14 seasons of the award, while only two winners3 have been born in Australia. At several points early in this season, the top four positions were locked out by foreign players, which probably suggests some success in recruitment.
The highest vote tally in a match this season went to Adrian Segecic, as he picked up 151 votes from 32 voters for his brace against Auckland at home in Round 26. More than half of the voters gave him all six of their votes, and the average of 4.72 is a new record for SFCU MOTM voting! It beats out Filip Hološko’s 4.53 away against Brisbane Roar in 2016.
Adding up average votes across the season, Segecic ended up with a total of 33.88, which was a huge distance ahead of the next best: Costa (24.78), Caceres (21.82), Lolley (21.03) and Ouahim (19.81). This is just the second time4 that the highest vote-getter hasn’t won Player of the Season, and the gap of 5.38 between Sega’s vote average and POTS points is the 8th-highest we’ve ever seen,5 so I think he can count himself unlucky not to have finished on top.
The fact that he managed so much with limited minutes just makes it more remarkable. Sega won MOTM off the bench three times this season, making it four for his career. No other player has more than two.6 His five top-three finishes from the bench this season took him to a total of seven, equal with Jaiden Kucharski on top of that tally for the club.7 He also sits fourth on a list of average votes per 90 minutes with 1.41 (46.35 votes in 2,957 minutes), behind only players with much fewer appearances: Marco Tilio (4.39 = 2.54 votes in 52 minutes), Tiago Quintal (1.70 = 6.15 votes in 326 minutes) and Alex Mullen (1.42 = 1.59 votes in 101 minutes).
Thanks again to everyone who voted during the season and big thanks to Grant, Alex and James for keeping the SFCU community together and the voting system up-and-running. The new season starts next week, so get ready to vote again.
Footnotes
- One shared, with Léo Sena.
- When Anthony Cáceres won it on MOTM countback over Max Burgess, two points ahead of Elvis Kamsoba.
- Nick Carle in 2011–12 and Anthony Cáceres in 2021–22
- After Miloš Ninković in 2015–16.
- Top of that list is Alex Wilkinson in 2019–20, who only had a tied third-place to show for 12.16 total votes. The same season, his CB partner Ryan McGowan had no top-three finishes despite 7.47 total votes, putting him second in the list.
- Trent Buhagiar, Elvis Kamsoba, Miloš Ninković, Anas Ouahim, Tiago Quintal, Matt Simon and Patrick Wood have all won it twice off the bench.
- Only two of JK’s came this season.